suraj.sun writes: Apple is being sued in federal court in San Francisco over allegations that every touch-based product the company makes infringes on a patent relating to touch-based interactive museum displays. According to the complaint, Professor Slavoljub Milekic conceived a system that used a touchscreen that allowed children to move virtual objects around the screen, which he used to build interactive displays for the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, in 1997, and filed for a patent on his design that same year.

The patent in the suit, US Patent #6,920,619 named "User interface for removing an object from a display," was issued by the US Patent & Trademark Office in 2005. According to the lawsuit, Milekic formed FlatWorld Interactives in 2007 to "promote and commercialize" his invention. Curiously, FlatWorld was incorporated on January 2007, just weeks after Apple announced the original iPhone at Macworld Expo. In July 2007, just after Apple shipped the original iPhone, FlatWorld filed a reissue request for the patent, which appears to have been done in order to modify some of the patent's dependent claims.Link to Original Source